Sign business environment being improved for foreign investments

THE ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE of Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, has recently published an English-language version of its plan to improve the business environment. China Daily writer Li Yang comments:

Industrial parks have played an important role in boosting China's economic growth for nearly 30 years, and numerous foreign enterprises have seen their businesses boom in industrial parks across the country. Yet this is the first time that an industrial park's administrators have taken the initiative to offer an English-language version of a document.

Which comes more as a surprise than an overdue praiseworthy move, since after more than 30 years, it is the first administrative department of the hundreds of national-level industrial parks to provide such a service.

Suzhou Industrial Park has not only shown its sincerity in providing greater convenience to the foreign companies in the park and those it hopes to attract, its English-language document also shows the department's willingness to dock its information services with international conventions.

It is encouraging that some other industrial parks have said they will follow suit and pay more attention to eliminating possible barriers that might be created by linguistic disparities and cultural differences by offering their information in more foreigner-friendly ways.

For decades, how to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers has been a headache maker for foreign enterprises in the country.

Although more Chinese nationals can communicate in English today than 30 years ago, the local governments' awareness of the need to make things easier for foreign investors has not changed that much.

Which is evident in their limited ability to communicate with foreign parties in foreign languages, as well as the shortage of foreigner-tailored information.

It is the central government that has set a good example in this regard by providing English-language versions of its documents. This has helped to avoid possible misunderstandings caused by ambiguities in translation.

After more than 40 years of opening-up, now is the time for local governments, particularly those that are eager to interact with the outside world, to improve their ability to communicate with foreign parties, and minimize the influence of linguistic and cultural differences on mutual understanding.